


Waves Crash On The Shore

by BrownieFox



Series: legacy au [1]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Legacy AU, Post Game, Prologue, Quirrel needs a hug, roudabout fix it fic, suicide allusions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21894544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrownieFox/pseuds/BrownieFox
Summary: Prologue to my Legacy Au (main fic still pending)Chapter 1 - Quirrel re-acquires his mask and a purpose
Relationships: Monomon the Teacher & Quirrel (Hollow Knight), The Knight & Quirrel (Hollow Knight)
Series: legacy au [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1577161
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	Waves Crash On The Shore

The Blue Lake is beautiful.

Quirrel has seen many beautiful things in his time - though he supposes that extends past what he can remember, a second (a first?) life he can barely recollect in which this fallen kingdom had been his home, in which he’d spent his days in Fog Canyon among the uoma and ooma, in the archives, in the service of-

But whether Quirrel has been here before or not, he knows that the Blue Lake is stunning. More stunning than anything he’s seen on his journeys outside of the kingdom, certainly more breath-taking than anything inside, and if there was something more brilliant in his past, he can’t remember it and thus it doesn’t count and he highly doubts that anything from back then could outdo this sight before him. 

A bug can certainly do worse for a final sight. It is far better the bright light of the infection. 

Quirrel sticks his nail into the loose rocks of the shore, wedging it firmly in. It is a good nail. He’s carried it with him for as far back as his memory goes, including his brief glimpses of the time before. He’s not worried about the water. The blade does not rust, it does not break, it does not become dull or scratched up. Someone will find it and appreciate it, hopefully. Quirrel isn’t sure what the little pale bug he keeps meeting was up to by taking out the Dreamers, but he has a feeling it has something to do with hope, and with that hope there’s a chance there will be bugs left after him with enough mind to wield the nail correctly. 

The Blue Lake is peaceful. 

Quirrel could use some peace. 

He sits at the edge of the of the shore, letting his legs dangle into the crystalline waters. The water is cool, almost cold. It’s refreshing. The infection has an odd heat to it, warm and inviting and oppressive. The air by the lake is clear of that taint. 

Quirrel looks at the rocks by the shore. 

Quirrel looks at the seeming endless depths of the water before him. 

His heart is pounding in his chest. It has enough force to shake his entire carapace, shake the entire expanse of Hallownest. It’s loud enough that the quiet of the lake it overtaken by the beat-beat-beat of it. Quirrel’s eyes lose focus. He can’t think, he can’t breath. He feels both numb and overloaded at once. 

And Quirrel can’t do this.

He yanks his legs out of the water, bringing them up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He sits at the shore of the lake for a long time, but the courage to re-enter doesn’t return. He does find the energy to stand back up, though, and he’ll take what he can get at this point. He feels embarrassed and dumb and weirdly guilty that he couldn’t go through with it. The water calls to him and it terrifies him. 

So he turns around, leaving his nail in the shore, and heads deeper into Hallownest’s caverns. 

oOo

Without cutting through the Blue Lake, it’s a bit of a ridiculous trip through the kingdom in order to reach Fog Canyon. 

Quirrel retreats back to the Resting Grounds, then from there takes the lift down to the City of Tears. He’s pretty sure the small pale knight was the one who got it working again - got many things working again, revealed many hidden passages - and for that he is thankful. He enjoys exploring greatly, but right now he wants to be in Fog Canyon more than anything, and the sooner he can get there the better. 

The husks of bugs that usually wander the city don’t crowd and attack him like he’s expecting them to. Instead, most of them lay on the ground, motionless. Quirrel almost tries his luck to nudge one of the husks and see if it reacts, but then remembers his lack of nail and decides to err on the side of caution and not look a stagbeetle in the mouth. There were a few of them that were still up and moving, that tried to chase after him (or in the case of the infected aristocrats run away from him) but he was much too fast and nimble to be caught. 

From there, he has to slip down into Royal Waterways and go from there to the Fungal Wastes. The sewer water comes out just below the Mantis Village and this time Quirel isn’t able to completely avoid the mantises sharp and quick claws sweeping at him as he ran by. It’s just a knick or two, though, and nothing to worry about. He makes it to the Queen’s Station after that, and from there to Fog Canyon. He scales the walls up to the archive with more care than he’s shown the rest of the trip, mindful of the uoma and their destructive cores. The ooma slowly float towards him, curious, and Quirrel keeps his distance still. 

At last, he reaches the old building that no longer calls to him like it used to.

There’s still something like a whisper in the air that begs at the bottoms of his feet, urging him forward. It isn’t the same strength as before, though, that had sent him searching all over Hallownest, both pulling him towards Fog Canyon and making him wary of stepping foot here, of what he would find, of what was calling to him. Now, he knows what he will find in here. He dashed through the other area of Hallownest to get here, but now he walks slowly, with measured steps. 

There is a sadness he doesn’t understand that wells up in his chest at the sight of this place, a nostalgia that both is and isn’t his that seeps all throughout him. The ooma, uoma, and charged lumaflies part for him as he makes his descent to the basement for a second time. He needs comfort, and this place used to be his home, so he prays that he will find some comfort here. 

Quirrel knows what he should see when he gets to Monomon’s chamber. He should see an empty vat where the teacher used to float, fo an air of almost regret to surge through him at the sight, to sit down on the ledge right by it and stare into the fluid and try to sort through the feelings he can’t understand that roll through him like waves, no memories connected to them. He expects to sit right by the empty vat and try to figure out what to do next, what to do now that his purpose has been fulfilled. 

He gets distracted from this set course, however, by the mask.

It’s all he can do for a moment to stare at it. He’d been there when the pale wanderer killed Monomon, had watched every part of her disappear, dissolving into the liquid she’d resided in.

But the mask is there now, in even better condition than it had been in for ages, the crack across its surface now gone. The dreamers cloak is there too, though Monomon herself is still gone, still dead. The cloak is empty, the eyeholes of the mask completely blank. 

Quirrel is moving before he even consciously recognizes the action, the call from before that had led him to Hallownest murmuring in his head and guiding him into the vat. He lifts the top of it, submerging himself into the liquid and swimming through it to grab the two objects. For a heartbeat the lid doesn’t lift, and Quirrel thinks he may just drown after all, but then he manages to crack it open just enough to pull himself out, coughing lightly and curling up around the cloak and mask on the ledge by the vat. 

He runs his hand over the surface of the mask curiously, easily overriding all the other emotions that had been warring within him. One bug he met during his travels once said Quirrel was ‘more curiosity than bug’ and Quirrel hadn’t and still wouldn’t deny that the truth the statement held.

The mask is a familiar and comforting weight on his head. He hadn’t realized how attached to it he was until he’d been without it. The cloak is another matter, as Quirrel had never been a bug to wear much but his masks and his scarf. The cloak is made of some fine material that quickly wicks off the moisture it’d been submerged in, and Quirrel experimentally ties it around his waist. It fits pretty nicely, more comfortable than he thought it’d be.

There is something about the objects. They remind him of the statues that radiate soul energy, charged with power. 

There is more left for him to do in this kingdom, isn’t there?

Quirrel slides the mask down over his face.

He has a nail to retrieve. He hasn’t finished needing it just yet. 


End file.
